Trump’s Defenders Have Plenty of Lame Excuses

You’re going to be seeing quotes from Federalist 65 a lot over the next few months. It’s the one where Alexander Hamilton explains that because impeachment “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community,” it will often “connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other.” The outcome, thus, will depend as much on political strength as on truth.

Watching the agitated arguments over impeachment this week, you’d have to say that Hamilton nailed it. The passions he mentioned are leading political combatants on both sides of the issue astray. Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who has been in Congress for 32 years, has decided that President Donald Trump is guilty of “treason.” Not according to the Constitution’s definition of the term, he isn’t.